It's December now, which always seems to be the month where you find yourself worrying about how little you've achieved this year out of what you've set out to do, balancing the desire to run around finishing things with the desire to ease into the imminent holidays (because what's the point in starting something new in the annual equivalent of 3 pm on a friday?)

So, I thought in a change of pace, it might be nice to instead reflect on the things that I have achieved in the year. And I'd love to see other scientists do the same, especially those who share my worries about not doing/achieving/being enough and who hate the feeling that they are bragging.

So, what have I done in 2015?

I spoke at three conferences and a workshop, sharing the award for Best Student Talk at the AMOS conference in Brisbane and giving an invited speech at Greenhouse in Hobart. And while I typically downplay it (“it's just a special ARCCSS session, they just needed some students”), that's actually kinda cool.

I followed through on my resolution for the year of getting into Twitter, Linkedin, Researchgate and the rest, as well as taking over managing the CCRC facebook page. I didn't necessarily use any of them consistently, this blog as one example, but I managed to write a blog post that got picked up at The Conversation and read by over 15,000 people, so that's pretty cool! I also did my first media interviews where I had to represent myself/my research instead of the Bureau, which was scary, and was in a video promoting the ESCCI project I've been part of.

I participated in the broader academic community by reviewing three journal articles, and I also helped supervise a student who joined us for a couple of months this winter.

I had two first-author papers published, as well as one finally getting volume/page numbers after online publication last year. I also have one first-author paper accepted and in copy-editing, two first-author papers in review, and one being drafted (based on that winter project). Not all are PhD-related, but that's okay. I was also a co-author on one published paper and another in review, both of which I feel like I really contributed to, which is nice.

And on top of all that, I continued to work at my part-time job at the Bureau, was approached about a potential postdoc for the first time, and got married. Not bad, really.